Writing in January of 2017, I thought the year 2016 went
by too quickly. Speed in time seems to
be happening more and more often. In any
event, with this message comes the start of this year's gallimaufry. I saw a Facebook post on December 31,
2016:
I'll try. May or may not be 365 pages.
While still dwelling on the transition from 2016 to 2017,
a quick revisit with Oscar Wilde:
"Good
resolutions are simply checks that men draw on a bank where they have no
account."
One of the several reasons I
quit making New Year's resolutions.
* * *
Within a day or so after I mailed/emailed my letter last
year, Krystin posted this language on Facebook:
It's
amazing what can happen in a year. I started 2016 as a walking corpse, almost
dying; I will end it being healthier than I've been in probably 15 or so years.
This year was challenging, and I was frequently both mentally and physically
exhausted. I spent about as much time IN the hospital as I did out, if not
more. But, here I am now, metaphorically standing on top of a mountain yelling
"take that, life. I did it!" It's true that where there's a will,
there's a way. Over and over and over, I found a way, and it feels so good,
because *I* feel so good!
That
was followed up with another post a couple of weeks later:
I
get to go back to work right after the new year!! I know people don't say this
too often, but I'm so excited! After 10 months of hospitalizations, moving, and
getting to a healthy state, this will be the best New Year ever.
Unfortunately,
2017 started out badly right out of the gate for her: shortly after the new year, Krystin had to
have bowel resection surgery for an obstruction; recovery landed her in a
transitional care facility for nearly 8 weeks.
Eventually, however, she recovered and returned to her home.
And
by March she finally got back to work. I
asked her how things went after she'd worked two weeks (8 hours each
week). "Work was good! I've always been a quick learner, so I've
been able to get back into the swing of things.
Like riding a bike!"
One of my friends wrote to me, apropos of Krystin, after
reading my (too) extended comments about her in last year's letter.
I
knew you had a difficult time with Krystin's illness but I had no idea just how
difficult it was (and I hope the past tense is accurate). It is amazing that
she has survived and also amazing that her family, all of you, have been equal
to the task of helping her despite what must have been feelings of utter
despair at more than one time. You most surely could write a book about the
experience. When I think about all the
families who have had, and are now, dealing with a sick child, it is an
overwhelming thought and a commentary on the human spirit of compassion and
endurance. That you have been able to keep your equanimity and also keep
working at your professional jobs and doing all the other things necessary for
your own daily survival is astounding. You and Kathy obviously come from very
sturdy stock.
I
didn't intend the remarks in the letter to elicit sympathy. What this reaction tells me is how
differently people interpret their life challenges. I wrote back to my friend that while "it
may appear that we have been heroic (or nearly so) in dealing with Krystin's
many problems, I take a more mundane view: we became inured to them and
simply dealt with them as they came along. Nothing was/is a surprise any
more and we must take everything in stride." I have never felt as
overwhelmed and stressed as my friend surmises, but that may be because I've
dealt with Krystin's medical issues for so long. They've become so predictable that my
response borders on "oh, yeah, here we go again, ho hum." I don't mean to be callous; I think it's
normal human reaction to the same repeated and prolonged stimuli. I suspect Krystin herself feels the same
way. Look up Skinner, B. F.
Coincidences abound.
I had keyed the "B. F." in that paragraph when my phone
rang. It was a physician's assistant at
the hospital telling me Krystin had been admitted for a minor problem. It wasn't life-threatening.
As of the end of the summer, Krystin has been doing
well: at work regularly (up to 12 hours
now), getting out and about, able to visit her cats regularly (at our friends
Peggy & Dan's, who we are extremely grateful to for their extended
cat-sitting duty), and avoiding any prolonged interactions with the medical
establishment.
* * *
I confess surprise at the number of people who continue
to send Christmas cards/letters to "Mr. & Mrs. Gary Engstrand" or
"Gary and Kathy Engstrand" or "The Engstrands." Kathy's last name has never been Engstrand
nor will it ever be, and few women in the 21st century under the age
of 70 would identify themselves as "Mrs. Gary Engstrand." (Actually, I suppose only one could, because
I don't think there are any other Gary Engstrands around—but Kathy isn't going
to do so. As far as Google knows, I'm
the only Gary Engstrand who has any electronic presence in the world.)
My long-time friend Ginny Kemppainen has adopted the same
practice I have when a couple has different last names: her card to us came to "Gary and
Kathy." I don't think the mail
carrier needs a last name, or even the correct name (given the amount of mail
we receive for other people).
After I wrote the two preceding paragraphs, I ran across
a blog piece by Debbie Cameron ("language: a feminist guide") about
the history and current practice of women taking their husband's surname (or
not) when they got married. Kathy sure
fits the demographics that Cameron describes.
As
I'm sure most know, both English and American law provide that one can take any
name one wishes as long as one isn't attempting to defraud. (There are a few restrictions in the U.S.
that vary by state; some bar the use of numerals or pictures and some put a cap
on the number of letters that can be used, primarily because of software
limits—another example of tyranny of the computer! That's a joke. Some European nations have stricter laws,
such as barring the use of obscenities.)
Anyway, it seems there were a couple of recent incidents
in England, one perhaps innocent and one perhaps not, of the use of the woman's
husband's name (Mrs. Clegg, Lady Nugee) in cases where the woman is a public
figure—and who objected to that use. In
our American world, the one bequeathed to us by the English, the practice of
hereditary last names came with the Normans—who were French and further back
Danish Vikings—when they invaded England in 1066. The Normans also brought "coverture": "according to which wives were vassals,
with no legal existence independent of their husbands. It followed that when a woman married she
would ‘lose every surname except 'wife of.'" Let a few centuries pass, and the
"originally alien custom" became English tradition.
In the U.S. in the middle of the 19th century,
there were signs that some women wanted to keep their surname rather than take
their husband's. Some states required
women to use their married name for official purposes; it was only about four
decades ago when those laws were finally tossed out.
Cameron observes that with choice available to everyone,
suddenly no choice is neutral. You
choose to take your husband's surname?
You favor a traditional concept of marriage. You keep your own name? You're a feminist. What about if you don't want to make a
statement at all, you just want to be married?
It appears that the percentage of women keeping their birth surnames
"increased sharply in the 1970s, rose to a peak in the 1980s, and then held
steady for several years before declining noticeably in the 1990s. By 2010 one US study reported that 94% of
native-born married women used their husband’s names." More recent data suggest that more women are
again retaining their own name—which still doesn't translate into a very large
percentage.
There's a further distinction to be noted: "Married women who keep their original
names are not just a minority, they’re a minority of a minority–they are
heavily concentrated in the elite professional class. Name-keeping is strongly correlated with having
at least one degree, and you’re most likely to be a keeper if both you and your
husband have more than one." Women
who marry younger tend to change their names more; those who marry later less,
but there's a high correlation between later marriage and educational
level. Perhaps unsurprisingly, religious
women are more apt to change their name than are the non-religious. Interestingly, "African American women,
including those with higher degrees, are more likely to be changers than white
women; other women of color, by contrast, are more likely than white women to
be keepers."
Cameron reports on 2011 research reporting that "a
large majority of respondents agreed that it is usually better for a woman to
take her husband’s name than to keep her birth name, and a significant minority
thought it would be a good idea to revive the old state laws requiring
this." The respondents did not
think it would be acceptable for a man to take the woman's last name; so much
for the theory that advocates simply want a single last name for a family. "Coverture may be legally defunct, but
its cultural traces evidently linger on (‘a husband and wife are one person,
and that person is the husband’)."
The justifications used by married women for taking their
husband's surname tend to reflect the views of others, Cameron observes. "It was important to the in-laws"
or "my husband didn't care one way or the other." So, she argues (I think correctly),
"part of what it means to be a woman in our society is that you can’t just
disregard others’ feelings—or at least, not without being harshly judged. So in many cases it’s an oversimplification
to treat a woman’s choice as a direct reflection of her political
beliefs."
Cameron also echoes a point that (I believe) Gail Collins
made a number of years ago: whether or
not a woman changes her surname to her husband's, in this society, with its
patrilineal naming practice, she has a male's surname one way or the other (her
husband's or her father's). "I knew
several women in the early 1980s who regarded surnames in general as
offensively patriarchal, and who had substituted their mother’s given name, or
something new-age-y like a colour-term or the name of a tree." There are other examples as well.
Cameron concludes:
When
people aren’t invoking the ‘one family, one name’ principle to justify sticking
with tradition, they’ll most often be shrugging their shoulders and saying
‘hey, it’s only a name. It doesn’t define me as a person’. But while I understand what they mean, I think
they’re overlooking something important.
The custom of women taking their husbands’ surnames was historically
part of a legal and social system that did define women—as non-persons. And the outcry, even today, when a woman
chooses a name that symbolises her independent personhood, suggests that the
old assumptions are not yet dead. A
woman’s name will be ‘only a name’ when no one cares what it is, or has an
opinion on what it should be.
Perhaps it's a reflection of the circles in which we
move, but we've never encountered either outcry or any expression whatever
about Kathy's decision to retain her (father's) surname rather than take
mine. The man and woman in a number of
the couples with whom we are friends have each retained their original surname. Kathy's mom, who's well into her 80s, didn't
even murmur when Kathy retained Jensen.
One suspects that the practice will continue to vary by level of
education, perhaps by skin color and religious affiliation, but that as our
children reach mature adulthood, they won't give a damn about whatever people
choose.
I asked a divorced friend what she thought. "I was happy to get rid of the ex's last
names . . . to be sure, I wouldn't hang on to those. My thought: Taking the husband's name doesn't
always mean you're traditional . . . or if you don't, a feminist. It's just what's easier for your own personal
situation. Sometimes it's convenient and nice to all have the same name in a
family. Second marriages . . . not so
much. The question I ask myself . . .
would I change my name again? NO. It's too hard to change all the accounts and
government issued docs. If they still
call me by my husband's last name . . . that's ok. The people who know me would know my legal
name anyway. But if my name is missing -
e.g., 'M/M John Doe' instead of using our first names, my thought is that the
sender is just lazy or not with the times!
And, to be honest THAT still bothers me!"
Seems a very reasoned approach. Changing the names on credit cards and bank
accounts and government documents would indeed be a pain.
Both Cameron and my friend find distasteful the phrase
"maiden name." It is a little
antique, at the least. I haven't used it
in decades.
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